


all this, and love too

by makurophage



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - War, M/M, One Shot, POV First Person, based on a legend about two lovers which i completely made up, theres akaashi and theres bokuto and theyre on opposite sides of the battlefield
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-04
Updated: 2018-12-04
Packaged: 2019-09-06 23:04:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16842247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/makurophage/pseuds/makurophage
Summary: (against my better judgment, i choke on the next inhale.)





	all this, and love too

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BnessZ](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BnessZ/gifts).



“Keiji.”

Your voice is a deadening comfort against the shell of my ear and for a second I trick myself into thinking that we are still young and stupid, hiding together in a parent’s closet instead of skirting around the perimeters of diamond-cut rules. I look up and your eyes harden like glaciers across a field of blood; who knew honey could turn that shade of steely silver. I wish I never had to find out.

“Koutarou.”

I return the not-sentiment like counterpoint; it’s stupidly easy to fall back on old habits. I feel my fingers twitch against my calves, jammed up in the hollow of your warm chest. I remove my scarf from my neck and lose the warmth; you hurry to unclasp a pair of earrings from your ears, understanding without words, as you always have. We exchange. I make sure my hand doesn’t brush yours on the way back.

Silence falls over the heady space like a thermal blanket when the thrumming sound of boots comes muffled through the door and I begin to count to ten without meaning to. Your lips are moving at the same awful pace. How similarly we have been trained, how unnecessarily the rancid blood spills on the grounds between our families like another meaningless stab at the cosmos for refusing to victor one atop the other, and yet. And yet. The hollow of your chest fills out after ten counts and your gaze feels too heavy on the skin of my neck.

I suppose that somewhere along the spider’s thread of dancing around diamonds I had forgotten how to summon tears because they refuse to come, even now, even with your thumb across my bottom lip and the straps of a military boot digging into the back of my thigh; even when my throat dries out as if you’ve taken all the fight out of my body just by remembering my name.  _ Keiji.  _ Like a plea to deaf stars.

* * *

The summer I meet you behind the fountain you’re playing lighthouse, one hand behind your back with a fistful of dandelions and the sunlight spelling out an  _ arabesque _ across your little face. I put down my violin and trip over my shoes in my haste to investigate your presence, terrified that the adults would come and take your radiance away if I didn’t hurry up and hide a piece of you inside my pocket. It’s selfish. I don’t care.

“I’m from that side of the line,” you tell me, whipping my thumb-sized jar of rosin in its direction before I can object. The container hits the mailbox with a resounding  _ gong  _ and falls to the ground, clattering along like a pebble. I yank you by the collar of your golden robe, back into the fountain’s long shadow, but I’m trying not to smile, really. I’m trying not to let you get away with whatever you want just because you give my heart desire to beat again, but the lighthouse is where the home is, for good reason. 

You climb the hundred-something stairs and lean out of its circular window into the salt-crusted ladder at the side, and then you climb that, too. The adults chase you across your palace grounds and lose you at the foot of the blue-green sea, threats and bribes loose in their arms, as if they know the first thing about containing you. I laugh heartily, keeping watch with binoculars from the safety of my fountain, and wave to you giddily when I think you’re looking my way.

“Don’t follow me,” you warn, bonafide and larger-than-life, when I try to take off my shoes after shadowing you to the edge of the line. “It’s wrong, you and I. You’d do better not to fall in love with me.”

I snicker at you. It’s easier when you say it like that, like you aren’t allowed to be here, because I’ve always been afraid of trouble and I’ve never known when it was right to test the patience of my wishing star.

Despite myself, despite everything, I drift to you helplessly, wrapped in kelp and the smell of the sea, furrowing up a mountain of sand where the hull of my boat meets your gritty shore.

* * *

“Keiji-kun, you know how to fight, no?”

I do. Too well, in fact, for a boy who spends most of his days at the marble fountain, violin at his neck, too well for a boy raised graceful and subtle like the lick of the tide against land. I am only relieved of training when my wrist forgets how to hold up the weight of a sword, its shiny blade; when I become too persistent with my questions—demanding, pleading, why on heaven’s earth I would ever need to incapacitate someone with such disregard.

My grandmother looks sadly at the way I light up when she speaks your name, and I realize that I’ve known, too much, all along.

* * *

In the last hour of a shivering sun I stand with my feet shoulder-width apart, back taut as the violin strings lain across my shoulder and twice as pained; only just before the line that splits my ground and yours, but only just. The plaintive notes take the shape of wings and soar beyond motionless bodies that fertilize barren soil, as if they can never learn how to stop, as if all this, too, shall pass like a dream, gnarled around the bars of pure music. I never did figure out where you ended and I began.

_ “For the a Great-Horned!” _

A roar, this time, the culmination of raw confessions and off-key love songs wrangled into a shape that looks a lot like you but isn’t, no, not when it’s standing tall across the expanse of the universe like there’s nothing that can topple its head from its shoulders. This is a loyal warrior, diamond-skin and drill-teeth with a cruel hand against his scabbard, golden eyes half-mast as if guarding your softer gaze from my worn talons. Against my better judgment, I choke on the next inhale.

The fight returns to my lungs when I remember how the song ends; it’s all too clear. This is how the song ends. This is how it begins, and this is how it shall cease to be.

I drag out a final  _ vibrato  _ and count to ten the way I’ve been taught. I let the instrument fall to the dirt around my feet. I bow across the line and the hilt of my blade carves the sound of a heartbeat into my side, purple-blue and indifferent like a distant galaxy. I bow to forget your name.

“Worthy soldier, it’s been a pleasure.”

My hands make to draw the sword but the hilt slips twice before I can control the twitching of my fingers again. The sky rumbles with an oncoming storm. I fight hard to evade the image of you in the rain that chases after the little boy in my mind, ever wanting, ever hopeful. You are so much; everything, even like this: you are sorrow when you remove your sword from its case like a poisoned arrow from the flesh; you are joy when the ruthless flame relights behind your eyes and a shaking laughter overtakes your apprehension. Everything, you are everything.

And so I ridicule the gods that pit me against you in a metallic dance to the grave; I drive the hilt into the soil and produce a black handkerchief to tie low across my eyes. I laugh along because we can make pretend. At least there’s that. I don’t need to look to know that you’re doing the same thing on the other side—white cloth against heavy eyelids like a preemptive surrender to fate’s wicked hand; and we’ve practiced: we’re good at pretending that the rules don’t exist and the stars shine only for you, that the night claims our vision and nothing more, that the dust will remember us when we’re gone, like crimson fingerprints littering the blade of my sword.

* * *

The people say that there were once two lovers who stood face to face on opposite sides of a battlefield. 

Both were warriors: one a formidable soldier, the other an agile musician. They say that in duelling on even ground, blind to everything but the exhilaration of their own tragedy, the two men engaged in such an intricate ballad of silk and steel that witness’ eyes could not even bear to follow their twisting feet, when all of a sudden a particular pierce of the blade stole right into the heart—but no cry followed. The musician stumbled forward with a wry smile on his pale face, shrouded in bloodied, silken robes, and with a flick of the wrist inscribed his own poison on the soldier, who upon being struck did not cease holding his lover like a glass figurine in his arms. The people say that a cloud of indescribably white dust rose as they fell upon each other, hands pressed to chest, silent as death.

When the site was investigated not a few minutes later, there were no bodies to be found—only a tattered scarf, a pair of rusted earrings, and the murmur of a grieving wind.

That night, the people swear, cherry blossoms rained down from the heavens.

**Author's Note:**

> AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA  
> thank u ness i died when i first read ur prompt thing


End file.
